How I trumped the Facebook Timeline

Wednesday 1 February 2012 10:18 BST

According to my Facebook profile, I was born in 1983, and up until 2007 nothing happened. I had never noticed before, but with the launch of the Facebook Timeline the emptiness of life Before Facebook (BF) is now quite evident.

Admittedly, though, it's the overflow of inane and marginally shameful activity After Joining (AJ) that is far more disconcerting - and it is this realisation that has some of Facebook's 800 million users in a pickle.

The next few weeks will see the roll-out of Timeline, Facebook's latest update to our profiles, to every user.

Once you have received the update you will have seven days to edit out anything you don't like, and then your Timeline, a reverse-chronological biography of your Facebook life, will be published on your profile, meaning that unless you hide or delete it, previously hard-to-get-to old activity, such as wall posts, photos and newly forged friendships, will now be no more than two clicks away. How very embarrassing.

As usual with Facebook matters, people are starting to panic. Petitions have cropped up all over the internet (ironically, mostly on Facebook) with some seeing this as the company's latest evil ploy to try to splash your personal information all over the internet.

And why not? Even Mark Zuckerberg himself has admitted that when it comes to privacy issues, Facebook has "made a bunch of mistakes" - mistakes which led US regulators to rule at the end of last year that Facebook would have to undergo biannual independent audits of its privacy policy and obtain consent from users before making changes to privacy settings.

If you think about it, Facebook has a database of 800million people's personal information which it uses for targeted advertising, plus facial recognition technology (really very clever), which is a little disconcerting, but actually, Timeline affects none of that. Everything on our Timelines was also on our old profiles - and it is there because we, or our friends, put it there.

"Timeline does not reveal any new information about you or change any of your existing privacy settings," a Facebook spokesperson has said. And this is true.

The changes compromise your privacy only to the extent you have elected through your own settings. So, if previously you let the public see your posts (are you a celebrity? Because if not, why would you do that?), then that remains the case.

What is newly compromised is your dignity, which is precisely why I became an early adopter of Timeline.

In fact, after a limited launch on September 22, when 1.5 million developers signed up, and a New Zealand-wide test run from December 6, Timeline became available to the public on December 15.

Those of us who signed up to Facebook in 2007, aged 23 - when we were young, foolish and too immature to recognise just how revolting FDA (Facebook Displays of Affection) actually are - know that our early Facebook lives were littered with sickening exchanges with ex-boyfriends.

So the moment I had the chance, on December 15, I took the Timeline plunge and headed straight for the Activity Log (a new Timeline tool that makes it incredibly easy to see every post, picture, comment or exchange that has ever gone up on your profile in reverse order) and began deleting all the embarrassing traces of an ex-boyfriend's existence. Now, nowhere on my Timeline does it say, "Loves ya, baby," or similar.

For those of us who have always kept tight control over our privacy settings (I have "custom settings", so that only friends - and not all of them - can see what I, or my friends, post on my profile) the scariest aspect of this new profile format is the horrible reminders we might get about ourselves.

Of course, those who clicked on the Privacy Settings tab for the first time this year should immediately click again and "limit the audience for past posts" so that when Timeline takes over, their now easy-access old posts will no longer be available for public entertainment.

A Facebook spokesperson says, "We've received a lot of positive feedback about Timeline over the last few months", but many users remain sceptical.

Some reports would have us believe that the constant tinkering with profiles and our privacy by Facebook has sent users running scared and prompted them to ditch their accounts.

Inside Facebook, an independent analysis site, showed last year that Facebook had lost 100,000 UK users between May and June 2011.

However, Facebook disputed the figures, which it said were based on its own advertising tool, which provides a broad estimate on the reach of Facebook advertisements from a sample and not comprehensive data.

Numbers from digital business analysts comScore and research company UKOM/Neilsen show a different picture - both recording an increase in users in the past year.

Despite the launch of Timeline last month, comScore puts UK Facebook users at 31.5million in December, up five per cent since February 2011.

Meanwhile, the anti-Timeline petitions have garnered limited support. Rather embarrassingly, the 10 Million Against Timeline page has just 370 likes, whereas Facebook's Timeline: Now Available Worldwide blog post has 24,929.

Whatever our concerns, we're clearly not ready to give up social networking just yet, and Zuckerberg will hardly worry about Facebook falling short of its $100billion valuation if, as expected, the company files papers today for a float in spring.

"We know change can be hard, especiall y for things that are as personal as a product like the Profile," said a Facebook spokesperson.

That's the nature of the internet, folks. Change with it, or be humiliated.

How to rewrite your past

Why should I edit my Timeline before it is published?"While it doesn't change any of your privacy settings on the surface, Timeline does dramatically change the discoverability of old activity and the way it is presented is more unpredictable," says Milo Yiannopoulos, editor of online technology magazine The Kernel. "There is no way to know what is going to pop up and how it will appear, but the likelihood is that the more embarrassing pictures and comments, which got more 'likes', will be the ones to resurface Change all your privacy settings and lock down everything."

What's the first step?Go to your privacy settings and select Limit the Audience for Past Posts. This corrects some mistakes from the early Facebook days of indiscriminately adding friends and broadcasting information to the world. Old data posted publicly will become visible only to friends. Edit all your privacy settings to limit the visibility of your information.

In 2008 my ex-girlfriend and I broke up publicly on my Facebook Wall. What should I do?On Timeline, visit your Activity Log (only visible to you). Click on 2008 and start frantically deleting posts.

And the photo of me swigging vodka from the bottle - will my boss be able to see it?The first rule of Facebook: don't "friend" your boss on Facebook. Teachers, care workers, nurses and police officers have been sacked on account of inappropriate posts on Facebook. Only allow photos to be viewed by friends. Remove the tag so the picture is not associated with your name.

Does that mean it has now gone?No. If you own and uploaded the photo you can set its privacy settings and/or delete it. If someone else uploaded it, you will have to send them a message asking them to change their own privacy settings or remove the photo. But they don't have to listen.

It's all too embarrassing. Can I just delete my entire profile?"The only way to protect yourself against anything potentially professionally damaging resurfacing is to delete your profile," says Yiannopoulos.

Beware, it's not so simple. "Deactivation" of your account only means that you and others won't see your information. Your account is saved on Facebook for reactivation at any time. To delete it permanently, submit a request to Facebook and then have no interaction with the site in any way (even through "liking" on other websites) during a "cooling-off" period.